The present invention relates to an instrument organizer, and in particular to a surgical instrument organizer which is formed of an economical material such as cardboard and which maintains a plurality of instruments stacked thereon in an open condition.
It is well known that surgical instruments must be sterilized, usually by exposure to saturated steam, prior to being used in a surgical procedure. A plurality of instruments are sterilized simultaneously, and although mere contact between the instruments is not a problem, should an instrument of the hinged type accidentally be locked closed during sterilization, the steam will not be able to contact the areas of the instrument which are brought together under pressure, possibly resulting in the instrument not being completely sterilized.
With the foregoing in mind, efforts are made to keep the instruments of the hinged type open during sterilization. According to one procedure, a wire ring for holding instruments during sterilization is opened and fed through one of the finger ring posts of each of a plurality of instruments, thus holding the instruments together. The instruments are opened when placed on the ring, but because they may be jossled incident to placing a quantity of instruments into a sterilizing tray, as well as during transport of the tray into a sterilizer, it often happens that one or more closes and locks.
A large number of instruments of various types are sterilized in the container, and after sterilization are transported to an operating theater and manually arranged according to type, so that they will be readily available during the surgical procedure. Because the instruments are spread out in the sterilizing tray, often one on top of and occasionally interlocked with the other, arranging the instruments in this manner is time intensive and inefficient.
Another known technique for sterilizing such instruments contemplates using a tray having a mesh bottom and pins or posts extending up from the bottom for extending through the finger rings of the instruments to maintain them open during sterilization. However, after sterilization the above described manual arrangement of the instruments in the operating theater is still required.